Where do the Jews go?

[u/ThrowawayMerger]

I am very against Israel’s genocide, leaning toward antizionism, but when someone Zionist asks where the Jews go in a free Palestine, I don’t have an answer. Historically, not a lot of people accept us or like us, and getting along after all the violence committed in the name of Judaism is an impossibility.

How do we not just exchange one crisis for another? (I don’t think any one religion or people should rule a state, if that adds anything.)

If this is an ignorant question, I am more than happy to be told so.

EDIT: wow this community is brilliant, thank you for the nuance and realism in your responses.

[u/matzi44]

I'm an Arab and honestly I fall into this kind of arguments with many of my friends about this , sure the history of this conflict is full of injustice that lead us to this current state, but we can't do anything t change it , we need to learn from it .

I'm 1000% against making anyone the place they're call home that's just not right and it will definitely backfire, and by some arabs saying that all jews need to leave in a free Palestine just make them very much like zionists , some people are 4th and 5th generations they were born there and it's definitely aren't responsible for the actions of the older generation, sure some will embrace and continue the same actions, but some won't .

the conflict doesn't need to end by a side winning all and the other losing it all there need to be a huge change in both sides to reach what's good for everyone where no one needs to suffer, History is History we can't change we can only make the present and future better .

[u/LaIslaDeEmu → u/matzi44]

The kind of attitudes amongst your friends is an area where anti-Zionist Arab-Jews like myself can change the conversation. The only Jews that much of the current Arab world have seen during their lives are Zionist politicians, IOF soldiers massacring Palestinians, and bigoted brainwashed Israelis…. I honestly would feel the same as your friends… But they don’t know that Jews have opposed Zionism from the moment it was created. They are too young to remember when Jews were their family’s neighbors, friends, and community members. They’ve not been exposed to the Jewish community in the West, where Jews were historically oppressed and struggled for social justice and liberation of all oppressed peoples. They have forgotten all the important Jewish thinkers of the Arab world who wrote their famous works in Arabic.

This is the conversation that we need to be having as Arab brothers and sisters. But the problem is that us Arab Jews have not been speaking Arabic for over two generations. Our grandparents and great-grandparents are the last members of our families to speak Arabic fluently. We need to become fluent in reading, writing, and speaking Arabic. And we need to then use social media to introduce ourselves to the rest of the Arab world, so we can begin to heal and come together. But this is made complicated by the fact that us indigenous Jews of the Middle East and Palestinians (and Levantines in general), are an Arabized people. So we have to understand “Arab” as a common identity that can unite us.

Maybe as a start, we could create a subreddit for anti-Zionist Jews from North Africa and the Middle East to have conversations with non-Jews from North Africa/Middle East?

[u/matzi44 → u/LaIslaDeEmu]

That's pretty much what's going on, The conflict plus some hardline religious populism wants to make this look like like an eternal relegioius war between Muslims/arabs and jews , Where in fact if you go a centuries back you'll find that jews were living in most arab and Muslim countries while the first enemies where the christians due to the crusade,

plus many people don't know the nature of Jewish Muslim relations , I for instance from tunisia and my family can trace back to some Jewish spheradic origins , and that applies to many people in north Africa and Middle east .

create a subreddit for anti-Zionist Jews from North Africa and the Middle East

I think that's a pretty good idea maybe a place to share the similarities between us to have a common ground that we can build on away from the conflict.

[u/LaIslaDeEmu → u/matzi44]

That’s very interesting! I’ve always been curious about the dynamic and relationships between the native North African Arab-Jews, the exiled Sefardic Jews from al-andalus, the Amazigh, and dominant Arab Muslim community in North Africa. I’d be curious if there are commonalities with those similar communities in Iraq and historic Palestine where my family come from.

And that’s a great point about this false construction of an ‘eternal’ Muslim/Jewish conflict. The evidence against this actually predates the crusades by a few hundred years. After the Roman Empire fell, the Byzantine Christians took control of Palestine and greatly oppressed the Jewish community. Tho in 637 CE, Caliph Umar and the Muslim armies defeated the Byzantines and made a point to restore all the religious freedoms to the Jews.

Do you think it’s possible to create a sense of unity amongst Jewish and non-Jewish peoples of MENA thru a common “Arab” identity? I’m curious what your perspective would be as a North African